Mashkin graduated from Moscow State University in 1921. He was appointed head of the subdepartment of ancient history at the Moscow Institute of History, Philosophy, and Literature in 1941 and head of the subdepartment of ancient history at Moscow State University in 1943. In 1948 he became head of the ancient history section at the Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. His principal work is The Principate of Augustus: Its Origins and Social Nature (1949; State Prize of the USSR, 1951), in which he showed the inevitability of Rome’s transformation from republic to empire. He studied the history of the Roman provinces, primarily those in Africa; his work on the history of the Circumcellions (Agonistici) is especially important. A number of his works are devoted to historiography, including the study of antiquity in Russia. He is also the author of the textbook A History of Ancient Rome (1947; 5th ed., 1956).

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